Jack Dorsey explains why Twitter fact-checked Trump’s false voting claims

&quot;incorrect or disputed information&quot;<p>&quot;This does not make us an “arbiter of truth.” &quot;<p>Deciding what constitutes incorrect or disputed information in a political climate absolutely does.

From a business standpoint, being proactive about misinformation being spread is going to make them stand out as a seemingly more moral company. More people will read and engage. The perception of the feature is slightly muddied right now because the fact check is being painted as politically biased. But the bigger picture is that helping people vote and be more informed helps people of every political background. If a tweet had the wrong date for election day and twitter had fact checked that, would correcting that be wrong as well?

It&#x27;s a dangerous precedent.<p>When a Democrat is in office, will Twitter appoint a rabid conservative to make the fact checks? Because it seems the current &quot;Head of Site Integrity&quot; has a long history of making incendiary opinionated posts against Republicans, rural states, etc.<p>Fairness should matter in the media. Without it, we&#x27;re on a bad path.

The whole fight behind voting really is political. It helps the left and it hurts the right. It’s like gerrymandering. Sure, people have the right to vote and should be able to, but that’s an intellectually dishonest way of representing changes in voting.

The initial warning label should have been simple and kept to objectively defensible claims.<p>&quot;Donald Trump said people in California do not need to register to receive a ballot. This is false. See $governmentSite for further information&quot;.<p>It <i>was</i> a mistake to use media organizations with partisan opinion sections as fact-checkers. The most important people to reach with that warning label are the most likely to dismiss any information from those media organizations. A warning label is useless without trust.<p>But, I am optimistic about Twitter&#x27;s use of fact-checking. I&#x27;ve watched both sides of the political spectrum slip deeper and deeper into delusion, and this is one of the few glimmers of hope. Twitter has the platform, the reach, and the power to effect legitimate positive change. I feel increasingly every day that the truth is slipping between our fingers. This feels like one of our few chances to realistically combat misinformation.<p>I meet people from both sides of the political aisle who have <i>incredible</i> blind spots. People who actively follow politics and yet often have never encountered basic counter-arguments to their narratives. The modern media landscape allows people to live ensconced in an information bubble. Twitter is the most bipartisan platform that exists, and thus in the prime position to pop those bubbles.<p>I appreciate that Twitter is attempting this step. This has almost no likelihood of increasing users and a strong likelihood of decreasing users. They have chosen to do something that will likely hurt their bottom line out of conscience.

Here&#x27;s Debbie Wasserman-Schulz in 2008 saying mail-in voting leads to fraud: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;M2Madness&#x2F;status&#x2F;1265698785813987328" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;M2Madness&#x2F;status&#x2F;1265698785813987328</a><p>Why does the entire liberal establishment (and its &quot;free&quot; press) insist on the non-sensical notion that mail-in voting is _less_ prone to fraud than in-person voting? The DNC doth protest too much, methinks.

Duplicate of <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23333504" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23333504</a>

I like Twitter, I really do. But Jack&#x27;s statement make no sense.<p>If Twitter wants to step over its bounds as a platform, then it will absolutely be scrutinized as such.<p>What I find incredibly dishonest is that Twitter&#x27;s head of &quot;integrity&quot; is a well-known troll who has on multiple occasions called Trump a nazi and more. How can we take their &quot;integrity&quot; seriously when it is led by someone with such an extreme political bias that there is no doubt this will impact what gets censored or not.<p>IMO this is not Twitter&#x27;s role and a very slippery slope.

&gt;Per our Civic Integrity policy, the tweets yesterday may mislead people into thinking they don’t need to register to get a ballot (only registered voters receive ballots). We’re updating the link on @realDonaldTrump’s tweet to make this more clear.<p>That might be the worst possible answer. That isn&#x27;t what people on the left found objectionable with that Tweet and specifically signalling that out isn&#x27;t going to assuage the complaints coming from the right.

We live in such strange times. The party that for decades bemoaned moral relativism has, because of its skepticism of global warming and other supposedly liberal narratives, convinced a large swath of Americans, conservative and liberal, that the truth itself is relative, or at least to pretend to believe so. That&#x27;s why people are so quick to disavow being &quot;arbiters of truth&quot; despite that once upon a time it was assumed everyone acted as an arbiter of the truth--who would dare give their voice to non-truths?<p>I keep returning to the notion that conservatives have become the standard bearers of radical leftist philosophies, such as poststructuralism&#x27;s arguments about the non-existence of objective &quot;truth&quot;. Republicans seem hellbent on proving this out. I&#x27;ve been arguing this for the better part of 20 years, though only recently did I stumble upon similar opinions, such as the satire piece, &quot;Foreword to Newt Gingrich&#x27;s Post-structuralism for Republicans: TrumpTruth and How to Make It, by Betsy DeVos, US secretary of education&quot;.

What a mess. We should just return to catholic monarchy or at very least restrict voting to a trusted nobility. Democracy is really just a euphemism for rule by the media, and the media just serves private corporate interests. it’s unrealistic to trust the average layperson to make decisions on matters of state. I wouldn’t trust my cook to cut my hair.